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PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 2:01 pm 
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I recently came home to an unresponsive MediaSmart Ex490. When I forced power off (because the graceful shutdown method was not working), the MS attempted to boot up, but got hung somewhere in POST. The power LED and the Ethernet LED were both on, but the system Health LED was flashing blue. All of the drive LEDs were off. The MS was essentially dead...I could not reach it remotely, and pressing the power button would not gracefully shut it down.

I did a lot of debug, and I found that the problem was caused by a Microsoft update which did not complete successfully (KB890830). For some reason, when this update failed to install, the system would not boot when the current date was set correctly. So, to get around this I had to reset CMOS on my MediaSmart.

There are a lot of other details on the debugging I did, but, essentially, here are the steps that I performed to fix this problem:

1. Unplug power from the system.

2. Disassemble the system and remove the CMOS coincell battery (leave it out for 30 seconds - 2 minutes to allow CMOS to fully drain). The point of doing this is to reset the system time back to its default time (mine, for example, was December 2002).

3. Re-install the CMOS coincell battery, re-assemble the system, insert power, and push the power button. If you've got the same issue that I do, then your system should power back up normally within about 5 minutes.

4. You should be able to remote desktop into the system at this point, if it has booted correctly, and the Health LED is solid blue.

5. Remote Desktop into your MediaSmart and go into Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs to see if Microsfot Update KB25700947 was the last update to be applied to your MediaSmart (Be sure that the "Show Updates" checkbox is checked). If so, then you may have the same problem that I had. DO NOT set the correct time on your MediaSmart just yet. For now, leave it at the default date/time.

6. Next, MANUALLY install the Microsoft update which most likely hung while trying to install on your system (KB890830). DO NOT let the automatic "Microsoft Updates" engine try to install this patch for you. Your system will most likely hang again. This is the link that I used to manually install it on mine: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/de ... g=en&id=16

7. Reboot your MS.

8. If all goes well, your MS should have booted back up normally. Now (and only now) should you change your Date/Time back to the current Date/Time. You can also let the automatic Microsoft Updates engine (you know, the yellow "!" you see at the bottom right part of the screen) install any other new updates that are out there.

Hope this made sense, and that it helps anyone who might be in the same boat that I was in yesterday.


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 3:32 pm 
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I found this helpful for how to open up the box: http://www.myhomeserver.com/?page_id=10

I did this and pulled the battery for at least 30 second, reassembled and still have the blinking blue health indicator, any more ideas?


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 6:09 pm 
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Hi Todd welcome to the forums.

The blinking Blue Health light is an indication that your server has not yet finished booting or something is preventing it from fully booting. The drive lights would also not be lit up. Now if you installed WHS2011 on your server then you will see this because the LEDs are not supported by WHS2011 but someone did put out a fix for it.

I would recommend you pull your drives and connect them to another computer and run CHKDSK /r on them. The System Drive will have 2 partitions SYS and DATA and all your storage pool drives will be named Data. It only takes one messed up drive to cause boot issues with WHS. Running CHKDSK /r on any drive is a time consuming process.

Aside from that is there anything else you can tell me about your server before the issue occured? Was there a power failure, any recent changes or previous instability issues you may have observed? Also what model server are you running and are you running any Advanced Format Drives (AFD)? Some AFD's require jumpers others need to be aligned before use and some are just plug and play. An ADF not properly setup will run fine at first then will create problems for WHS.

I look forward to working with you and hope we can get to the bottom of your issue and get your server back online so you can resume enjoying it.

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:12 pm 
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I have not installed WHS2011. The drive lights worked earlier in the week. This is an HP ex485 with 4 drives, the 750 that came with it, two 1 tbs and a 2 tb. I don't know about advanced format drives, I don't think I have any. The unit has always been a little flaky, but usually restarting it would correct the problems. By flaky, it only has two jobs, to house my music files and to backup my laptops and desktop. Every so oftern it decides to stop communicating, so I do a hard reset. We have had some power problems here recently with Irene and Lee, but it's on a Cyberpower UPS which is itself protected by a tripplite surge protector. I did as you've suggested and began cycling my drives thru my dell xps 8300 running win 7. The first drive (a data drive) processed quickly, chkdsk seems to automatically start. The next was the system drive at first wasn't recognized, after restarting, it started chkdsk again on it's own and verified 44592 file records, 189 large files, 5 reparse records, 52892 indexes, verified security descriptors on 44592 files with 4152 files processed, and repaired 264 usn journal bytes. Then it stopped after saying that the usn journal verification was completed. I waited 15 minutes, but nothing more happened, so I restarted the dell, windows came up and proceeded to perform the chkdsk again, all with the same responses and it stopped again at the same point. So, I restarted again and bypassed the chkdsk, it finally started win 7 after a terribly long time. I went to the command prompt and tried to run chkdsk /r but it responded thyat I did not have sufficient privileges and neede to invoke this utility running in elevated mode. How does one do that?


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:21 pm 
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figured out how to start cmd with higher privledges. Tried chkdsk/r, but it doesn't respond. I believe my system drive is toast. Do you agree? or am I missing some other trick?


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:01 am 
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have pulled and chkdsked all the storage drives, all pass except for the system drive, most times it is not even recognized, when it is it freezes after the upn tests


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 4:35 pm 
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If the system drive is none responsive then you should replace it and perform a Server Recovery to preserver you data. All your storage pool drives will need to be connected to the server. DO NOT perform a Factory Recovery because it will format all the drives in the server.

After you finish the recovery make certain you download all the Updates from HP and Microsoft. During this time your server may tell you that you backup database is corrupt and recommend you repair it. Ignore those types of messages until all the updates are installed and there are no additional updates to install and you should see those messages go away. If you do repair the client database before you obtain all the updates you will lose your client data so please keep this in mind.

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~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:08 pm 
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Mitgrad93 wrote:
I recently came home to an unresponsive MediaSmart Ex490. When I forced power off (because the graceful shutdown method was not working), the MS attempted to boot up, but got hung somewhere in POST. The power LED and the Ethernet LED were both on, but the system Health LED was flashing blue. All of the drive LEDs were off. The MS was essentially dead...I could not reach it remotely, and pressing the power button would not gracefully shut it down.

I did a lot of debug, and I found that the problem was caused by a Microsoft update which did not complete successfully (KB890830). For some reason, when this update failed to install, the system would not boot when the current date was set correctly. So, to get around this I had to reset CMOS on my MediaSmart.

There are a lot of other details on the debugging I did, but, essentially, here are the steps that I performed to fix this problem:

1. Unplug power from the system.

2. Disassemble the system and remove the CMOS coincell battery (leave it out for 30 seconds - 2 minutes to allow CMOS to fully drain). The point of doing this is to reset the system time back to its default time (mine, for example, was December 2002).

3. Re-install the CMOS coincell battery, re-assemble the system, insert power, and push the power button. If you've got the same issue that I do, then your system should power back up normally within about 5 minutes.

4. You should be able to remote desktop into the system at this point, if it has booted correctly, and the Health LED is solid blue.

5. Remote Desktop into your MediaSmart and go into Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs to see if Microsfot Update KB25700947 was the last update to be applied to your MediaSmart (Be sure that the "Show Updates" checkbox is checked). If so, then you may have the same problem that I had. DO NOT set the correct time on your MediaSmart just yet. For now, leave it at the default date/time.

6. Next, MANUALLY install the Microsoft update which most likely hung while trying to install on your system (KB890830). DO NOT let the automatic "Microsoft Updates" engine try to install this patch for you. Your system will most likely hang again. This is the link that I used to manually install it on mine: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/de ... g=en&id=16

7. Reboot your MS.

8. If all goes well, your MS should have booted back up normally. Now (and only now) should you change your Date/Time back to the current Date/Time. You can also let the automatic Microsoft Updates engine (you know, the yellow "!" you see at the bottom right part of the screen) install any other new updates that are out there.

Hope this made sense, and that it helps anyone who might be in the same boat that I was in yesterday.



This is amazing - and the timing and similar behavior give me reason to be hopeful about my situation (posted here in the forum this morning).. I"ll try the approach outlined here after running chksdk on all my drives and report back..

thx


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 4:39 am 
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Ditto, had the same problem and this fixed it. Thanks.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:55 am 
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I wish I had found your post earlier. My server also locked up. It might have been this update OR a failed OS harddrive (I replaced it and did get things working again) OR a software conflict.

This update is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool from MS. On my server, I had Avast running. My first attempt at a restore get me right back where I started after doing updates and installing Avast again. I currently do not have Avast installed.

It might be a coincidence or it might not. I mention it for future reference for anyone else in this situation.


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 4:20 am 
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Do I have the same thing?
The malicious software update on my PCs, not the server, seems to have been installed on Oct 3 so am wondering why all has gone wrong now?
Thirteen issue were flagged up by the connector troubleshooter as shown in nscreenshots in my post.
Have posted this question on 9.11.11
Not quite sure about the two updates mentioned
(KB890830) is this the one that needs reinstalling manually?
If so what is
Microsoft Update KB25700947 and what needs doing with it?
Think you may mean:
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 file information
Security update 2570947 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 applies a change to the registry. No files are installed on the computer. Therefore, we have not included file attributes tables for this security update for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Presumably this includes home server and it has tried to instal itself on this??
Good job the pictures of getting the lid off the server have been posted as mine are probably stored on the server. Not sure having got it open where the cmos battery is (does it stand vertically on the motherboard?) and how to get at it or is it easy??

Hi Folks,
All well yesterday until we went out.
The wife swiched PC off last night so cannot fathom if anything went awry between 19.00 and midnight.
Switched main PC on today grey house icon!
Same on second PC.
Ethernet cable to router seems fine from server.
Network cable lights at back left one dark orange or red right one amber/yellow.
Cannot think what has caused this.
Only recent work;
Friday - updating all firmware on devolo powerline home network adaptors - all working fine yesterday and now.
Saturday noon installed Jaguar electronic parts guide.
Am pretty sure I accessded server after that.
Can see no Windows updates.
Here are the screenshots of what came up. Cannot access the server over the web so totally helpless!
your advice much appreciated. Hope the answer is, "Just throwing a little tantrum, press the power button and turn it off and it will be perfect when you switch it on." Somehow I doubt it!
Thanks for your help.


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 6:38 am 
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My EX475 is "back in for service", the symptoms [health indicator light blinking reddish-purple, no drive lights] are the same as original poster Mitgrad93's, except the server successfully restarted after Windows Update. The problem occurred about 10 days after the last update. I still thought it might be a good idea to clear the CMOS and run CHKDSK, there are 4 drives in the case and an external 2TB eSATA. However, the system drive is not being recognized, Windows says its two partitions only contain 'RAW' data as shown by the screenshot. Is this expected behavior :crazy: and if not, could a recovery program like SpinRite fix my system drive? The other 3 internal drives are recognized as NTFS drives.
At this point, I don't care about restoring the EX475, I'm only interested in data recovery!
Attachment:
File comment: Raw data on the system drive?
whs_system.png
whs_system.png [ 79.53 KiB | Viewed 14621 times ]

e


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:27 am 
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As I understand it the info on discs is all stored as normal files so you can put them in a caddy and COPY it off.
Presumably if you had duplication on and one disc in knackered your data will be safe on another?!
I believe Alex mentioned in one of these posts not to change any data on the discs as this definitelty will wreck matters!
I am petrified of the same problem so back up my server termly to hard drives, one kept at home and one at school just in case the house.......!! If after all this you get back sorted alex tells us all to do BDBB backups as well. I think I half understood what that was once so I do as he says.
Please verify all I have said because i am no expert. On the bright side over four or five years my six mothly problems have all got solved. Your will too.
Mike.


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 12:00 pm 
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mikefarnham wrote:
On the bright side over four or five years my six mothly problems have all got solved. Your will too.Mike.
Thanks for your words of assurance, during this time of data anxiety, they are appreciated.


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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:20 am 
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To find your data all you need to do is connect the Storage Pool Drives to another computer. Set that computer so it can view hidden files and folders then you will see a folder named DE and within that you will find the files you are looking for. Depending on how many storage pool drives and if you had duplication turned on or not will determine how your files are spread out accross the drives.

You can then copy the files to another location but its important that you do not modify the storage pool drives if you wish to perform a Server Recovery and have it work properly. Also when performing a Server Recovery it will be important to have all the storage pool drives connected to the server. If any client backup data was stored on the system drive but if it was stored on the other storage pool drives then it should be intact. One thing worth mentioning is that during a Server Recovery you may get a message that your client database is corrupt and a recommendation to repair it. If you see this its important to ignore it until you have downloaded all the HP and Microsoft updata as in most cases that error or alert will go away. Any attempt to repair the database before the server software is updated will certainly cause you to lose the client backup data base.

Whatever you chose to do just take your time and you will do well. Should you have any questions or need additional help please feel free to ask.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8


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